I'm not an engineer, so I have no idea what motivates engineers in photography...

But overall the above seems a very strange comment, especially coming from you, as you've just described about 80% of the images you have displayed in your galleries on your site... Are you saying you don't give a sh*t about your own images?[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=54106\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Not at all. I just don't confuse them with art. Some are illustrations for scholarly magazines, some are PR shots for the website and popular archaeology magazines, some are snapshots. None of them stand alone, as a work of art should. You're not looking at the object, you're looking through the object at the subject. One of the key aspects of art that it's the art object that counts, not the subject. Nobody -- well, very few people -- cares about the models in Manet's paintings, and how many people know the names of Diane Arbus' subjects? It's the painting or photograph that counts. In my stuff on the web site, the photo itself counts for almost nothing -- it's the subject that counts. It's photography as a recording device, not as art.

Pom, firstly, that photograph is excellent. I can see why it sells well. Congrats. That is art - you had an image in your mind of what you wanted to express, and you have the smarts and materials to implement it.

So, secondly, the point you are making is valid, and the same thing Jonathan and I have been saying in other words - art, science, technique are symbiotic - partners in the production of artistic photography.

Jack Flesher, I agree - you cannot know what motivates engineers in their photography any more than you can know what motivates any one else in photography except to look at their work and see what it says. So the whole idea that engineers or scientists or doctors would approach photography any differently than anyone else is just complete nonsense. A most recent corroborating experience - last month I returned from participating in Michael's photography workshop in China. The group included people having highly varied professional backgrounds, but a common dedication to photography - readers can judge for themselves whether they think how one makes a living determines vision, artistry and technical skill in making photographs. (You can see contributions from some members at http://www.luminous-landscape.com/workshop...members.shtml.)

It is interesting, talking of how art comes into the photographs, sometimes I will go to a site with a specific photograph in mind. This photograph was inspired by MR's photo of the same scene. When I saw that I realised that this picture screamed B&W at me and with the idea of expressing the lonely serenity that this picture shows (I made sure no people were in it!) I went and shot this picture in Iceland.

On the other hand I wasn't particualrly impressed with my other pictures from Iceland in that I had gone with preconceptions of the type of photo that I'd intended to capture, instead of letting the scenery suggest a way for me to portray the 'feel' and ambiance of any given scene. I tried to force a certain style or type of photo without just letting the camera paint my emotions. It became painfully obvious (I realised it at the time and it was fustrating the heck out of me) in exactly the way that Alain describes, faced with a popular scene that I had envisaged photographing in a certain way, I found that my idea clashed with the realities of the scene, be it with the lighting, the composition, access or whatever. I then tried to photograph it using the rules and the photos did nothing for me. I walked away with 4 sellable images only 3 of which I consider to be original (the dettifoss waterfall is almost textbook and doesn't excite me in the slightest) and it was only those three that followed my 'personal' style of pulling out an element of the scene and letting it speak and convey a message or emotion of it's own through its simplicity of composition.

Don't know what the answer is except to let the landscape show your emotions through the lens and not to get tied down to preconceptions!

That doesn't change the fact though that if I didn't know how to take the photographs or my equipment wasn't up to it then I'd have been in a much worse situation!

Elephants (and other animals, such as gorillas) that paint aren't creating art in the context described in this thread, where an end product is envisioned at the beginning of the process, and then a deliberate course of action is undertaken to create something resembling the previously envisioned goal. It's not like the elephants have their Impressionists and Cubists and Realists, some preferring to accurately recreate the world around them in their images, and others preferring to create more abstract representations of things that may not have a physical reality.

Having read this discussion so far, I think we all generally agree. Technology is a means to an end, and Art is the product. A certain balance is needed between knowledge and ingenuity. Knowledge about the means, and ingenuity in reaching the creative goal. The balance is not a dichotomy, but more like a symbiosis.

But the following question keeps my mind pondering, so I would like to offer it for general consideration:

Generally the answer is yes, but it takes someone to break out of the current paradigm to be able to exploit it; and, even then it may take several years of refinement; plus several more for the general populace to apreciate what has taken place.

I would say yes. The invention of photography spawned a completely new medium of artistic expression that did not exist previously. Advances in paint technology allow a wider range of colors, greater longevity of the finished work, etc. Improvements in metal working technology allow easier and more precise shaping of metal than before.

By the way, I clicked on the wrong tab on the entry above this one, and don't know how to get rid of it. If anybody knows, tell me, and I'll edit it out.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=54120\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Click the edit button, hilight what you don't want and hit the "delete" key

Pom, firstly, that photograph is excellent. I can see why it sells well. Congrats. That is art - you had an image in your mind of what you wanted to express, and you have the smarts and materials to implement it.

So, secondly, the point you are making is valid, and the same thing Jonathan and I have been saying in other words - art, science, technique are symbiotic - partners in the production of artistic photography.

Hence, thirdly, it is not you who are confused.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=54121\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

That doesn't change the fact though that if I didn't know how to take the photographs or my equipment wasn't up to it then I'd have been in a much worse situation![a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=54127\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Amen. And IMO that is a very nice image Pom!

Moreover it certainly looks like art to me as well -- even though it appears to be "water leaping over rocks" ... (Sorry, couldn't resist )

Does an advance in technology mean an advance in Art?[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=54134\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Definitely no, I will say. One could argue that the essentials of Art were fully expressed in the caves of Lascaux, Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc, etc. Since then there have been changes in media (extending to film and video to cite obviously more technological options) and changes in how society views the practice and products (the expression of ideals of body beauty in Ancient Greece, Art in service to Religion in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance search for increased verisimilitude, the 20th century span of Modernism which took Art to the point where it dissolved into Philosophy - read Arthur C. Danto's writings. Along with these tracks were the non-figurative works of Islam and the Magical fetishes of African Art.) While there is no critical record from Palaeolithic times one can easily speculate that the motivations of the cave artists were little different from those of artists today, once one strips away the thin veneer of "civilized" discourse and the shift of emphasis to the ego and superego. Studies of the work and motivations of Picasso, the quintessential 20th century artist, shows the same magical thinking that informed the most "primitive" work of the past.

Is better poetry written using a pencil, a ball-point pen, a word processor? No, better poetry is written by better poets. The original oral tradition of poetry required no technology at all. Homer had the essence - the play and power of words.

The entire range of photographic expression may be found in Atget's work. We are just doing our variations.

Does it? Is the reason we have (mostly) gone digital because of anything but convenience (control, getting med frmt quality with 35mm, getting the grain of a 6X7 with 35mm, instant feedback, etc). My 2 best selling pictures were taken on a Canon A1 with a Vivitar 28-200 f3.5-6.3 lens of Fuji Superia 200, on a really crappy tripod I may add and with no polariser. They are regularly printed to 18X12".

My boss used to say that a pro can take a better picture with a disposable camera than a beginner with a top pro camera, because they understand light!

It's true though, vision is far more important to the pursuit of art than technology. People buy my shots from my film 35mm or Mamiya 645 days eventhough there is noticeable grain in the skies even on 8X10" prints where there is none on a 18X12 from my 10D. The technology is useless without the vision and the vision can be made using yesteryears technology if it is powerful enough. I'm sure all will agree that the art aspect of their fine art photographs is not a result of their machines!

You could argue that the digital era means that technology increases enables us to actualize our vision in the way we meant it to, but lets face it, if we were to have shot the same images on film then they would have been up for exhibition while we still tinker in PS. Digital technology in many many ways only serves to play catch up to the convenience that a film workflow offered pre the digital era and therefore cannot be said to be improving our art, just getting it back to where it was 10 years ago.

I'm not arguing that film is better than digital, just that the technological advances have not improved our art, just the conveniece of making it. As a wedding photographer I can very strongly put forward the point that convenience in the field of photography has, in some ways, only served to harm the 'art' put forward. Witness Uncle Bob with his digital rebel shooting weddings and then the B&G coming crying for help, it's not uncommon...

Personally, I tend to agree with Russell's view. Clearly more megapixels does not mean better Art. It merely means sharper images; making the concept all the more fuzzy in comparison, to quote loosely. And a B&W Art expression should work as well on your 10 year old HP with a density of your average windowpane, vs a double K3 epson print with a black that has all the characteristics of deep space... Because "ideally" it is the message that counts, not the technical execution.

And I wouldn't be surprised if painting actually was incepted because people conceptualized photography. But they just didn't have the technology back then. No different then us being able to conceptually imagine a 3d holographic Art expression today.

But that would come dangerously close to a dichotomy.

Yet I also agree that most people have a tendency to think within constrains, which basically means that if technology advances, so will most artists advance as they fool around with the *new* capabilities of the medium. That would be another way of defining the symbiosis.

Could I be so bold as to say that that is what allows the "real" Artist to be separated from the chaff? His/her ability to be creative beyond the bounds of technology?

Is better poetry written using a pencil, a ball-point pen, a word processor? No, better poetry is written by better poets. The original oral tradition of poetry required no technology at all. Homer had the essence - the play and power of words.

IMO that's a deeply flawed analogy. When someone is reading a poem, the listener has no way to tell whether the reader is reading from a carved stone tablet, a parchment inscribed with a quill pen, or the monitor of a laptop computer. But if the performance is recorded, the listener's experience changes significantly depending on whether the performance was recorded from the other side of the room with a $30 pocket-sized microcasette recorder, or in a studio with reasonably state-of-the-art recording, mixing, and mastering equipment.

While it is true that there are times when the artistic intent of a photograph comes through even when captured with a Holga with a scratched lens and film well past its expiration date, it is also true that there are also many times when such a lens and camera would detract from the impact of the image. This is why people who shoot with a Phase One back or a 1Ds usually do not Gaussian blur their captures to match the look of the scratched Holga.

Art and science/technology/technique need to be used together for best results. Improving either will improve the result to some degree, although for best results neither should be neglected. Having the ability to shoot at ISO 1600 does not by itself improve a concert photo, but it does offer the photographer a greater arsenal of tools with which to practice Art.